Newt Gingrich: Drug test everybody, Singapore-style

I thought it would be good to thoroughly hash out Newt Gingrich's disturbing views on personal freedom, privacy, and capital punishment regarding drugs.

In this interview, Bill O'Reilly explains that the War on Drugs isn't working. Of course his idea of a system that "works" is to point to a fascist Nanny State that searches anyone it wants without a warrant and executes people for non-violent activities. Singapore, really?! They cane people to death in Singapore!!

Gingrich responds by saying that America needs to "get the stomach" for Singapore-style tyranny. He cares so much about your health and sobriety that he is willing to turn the United States into a totalitarian police state. He loves you that much. And his record backs up that he means this 100%.

ORLY: I don't know whether you know this, but I did one of my papers at Harvard on this -- on how to reduce demand for drugs. But the United States has never figured it out. You can't lock up drug users, I mean, that doesn't work. And you can't force them into rehab, you have to want rehab, and even if you want it, it's very hard to get off hard drugs and alcohol. Very hard.

What you can do, though, is sanction people along the way. And this is what they do in Singapore. If you're caught possessing drugs -- and that means drugs in your bloodstream, they have a little hair thing, and they put it in there -- then you have to go to mandatory rehab. And they have centers where you go. Now, they have no drug problem in Singapore at all, number one, because they hang drug dealers -- they execute them. And number two, the market is very thin, because when they catch you using, you go away with a mandatory rehab. You go to some rehab center, which they have, which the government has built.

The United States does not have the stomach for that. We don't have the stomach for that, Mr. Speaker.

GINGRICH:Well, I think it's time we get the stomach for that, Bill. And I think we need a program -- I would dramatically expand testing. I think we have -- and I agree with you. I would try to use rehabilitation, I'd make it mandatory. And I think we have every right as a country to demand of our citizens that they quit doing illegal things which are funding, both in Afghanistan and in Mexico and in Colombia, people who are destroying civilization.

How bad is Singapore?

To expand on Singapore, and grasp just how horrific of a model that Gingrich and O'Reilly support, look a little closer at what they do there. Citizens are harassed any time, searched without warrants, treated as guilty-until-proven-innocent, and forced to give bodily fluids on demand. If they are found guilty, they are caned, imprisoned, or executed.

Singapore is the textbook system that we should be striving against. Nothing they do there resembles freedom, or would be compatible with a constitutional republic such as ours.

There’s much more. In 2009, Gingrich agreed with Bill O’Reilly’s call for Singapore-style drug laws in America. In Singapore, the police can force anyone to submit to a urinalysis without a warrant. They’re permitted to search you without a warrant. And if you’re seen in a building or in the company of drug users, you’re assumed to have been using drugs as well, unless you can prove otherwise. They also have Gingrich’s favored mandatory execution of anyone possessing over a specified amount of illicit drugs. (And there’s little evidence that the policies are working.)

The statute's penal provisions are draconian by most nations' standards, providing for long terms of imprisonment, caning, and capital punishment. The law creates a presumption of trafficking for certain threshold amounts, e.g. 30 grams of cannabis. It also creates a presumption that a person possesses drugs if he possesses the keys to a premises containing the drugs, and that "Any person found in or escaping from any place or premises which is proved or presumed to be used for the purpose of smoking or administering a controlled drug shall, until the contrary is proved, be presumed to have been smoking or administering a controlled drug in that place or premises." Thus, one runs the risk of arrest for drug use by simply being in the company of drug users. The law also allows officers to search premises and individuals, without a search warrant, if he "reasonably suspects that there is to be found a controlled drug or article liable to seizure". Moreover, Section 31 allows officers to demand urinalysis of suspected drug offenders.

holding

Jeezus Kryste (the preceding exclamation is not meant as a mockery, but rather as a means of using an expression without offending the faithful or pious amongst us)! Really, Mr Speaker? The solution to the demand for illicit drugs is to curtail the civilliberties of Americans further, expand government even further by building and operating at taxpayer expense more punitive facilities? What is mandatory rehab if not a minimum security prison sentence, especially if it houses people not looking to be rehabilitated? So apparently what makes sense to a supposedly fiscal conservative former Congressman is spending more money to expand America's criminal justice system.

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme change.

Why is it taboo to have a rational discussion about ending the war on drugs? The use of (what are currently) illicit drugs is analagous to alcohol use in every way. It is not the consumption itself which is illegal. It is the activities undertaken while under the influence, which put others' lives at risk which is to be punished.

Dear universe,
Please send the comet.
Thanks in advance
Lou

Last edited by Bill of Rights; 11-28-2011 at 17:27.
Reason: This post merged in from the other thread at the member's request.

It is a page taken from the playbook of the Chinese Capitalists of the 80's AKA the Generals of their military. They brought guns in and used the funds to pay for the drugs which in turn made them even more money. Clinton was their buddy, Detroit was their base in the 80's. When the Chinese pissed him off, he made life for AK's in America much harder.

You don't want to ship air, so the Mexicans bring in drugs and take home guns. Control the border and you break their economic chain and in turn also bring money and jobs home. Growers here in the US can pick up the slack. The Mexicans will just have to use boats and planes but God knows they don't do that now. (40 years ago I knew two teens in our hood in LA who flew Daddy's plane to Mexico and were never seen again)

I love how Newt frames the drug debate as having only two sides, right and wrong. Weak or strong. He does not see legalizing as a third perpsective, just part of the wrong. This is where Newt sounds like a Liberal, just create an entire class of criminals, then prosecute them.

He needs to go back to his fried chicken and his whores and maybe drink some more of his legal bourbon.